Citizen Alert ZA

South Africa has the second highest murder rate in the world. It is a favourite hangout for organised crime syndicates from every corner of the world..CORRUPTION...Who Cares ?
. No fear No Favour - The Truth sets you FREE...........

This emerged after a Weekend Post investigation into the shady past of Jaqui Gradwell, 56, who, along with a former wife, came into contact with the Van Rooyen and Haarhoff circle when they were much younger.

The police are also following up on leads on the possibility of a link between Gradwell and Van Rooyen.

Gradwell, the leader of the Eden Project, and girlfriend Etrezia “Trish ”Weber, 28, are still in custody after being arrested for allegedly being in possession of a stolen firearm and dagga. They are due to appear in the Ladysmith Magistrate’s Court again on Tuesday.

Gradwell – who has at least eight convictions, including for robbery and theft – changed his name from Johan Kobus Pretorius to Jaqui Gary Gradwell prior to 1994. He has been married at least six times and allegedly had an affair with his daughter-in-law.

Since his arrest, Gradwell has also become a suspect in an unrelated investigation by a specialist police unit in Oudtshoorn. Van Rooyen, who kidnapped and is believed to have killed six children between 1988 and 1989, shot and killed Haarhoff before turning the gun on himself as police closed in on them in January 1990.

Forensic investigators were recently hopeful that the answer to the Van Rooyen cold-case mystery – unsolved for nearly three decades – was buried beneath the sand at Blythedale Beach near Ballito. But they abandoned the search after finding nothing.

Gradwell’s son, Johan Ettiene Pretorius, told the Weekend Post there were several links between his father and mother and Van Rooyen and Haarhoff, stretching back to when his parents were in a foster home together as children.

****

Carel Boshoff, President of the Orania Movement’s response to this article. Click here for the original ruling.

The EditorThe Herald

Sir

Is Orania a “whites-only town”? As implied by a report on
your pages(Weekend Post, July 1)
when mentioning us in association with some racially defined
planned
project in the Eastern Cape?
From Orania’s point of view we are adamant enough to have
taken up the
issue, even with the PressOmbud of South Africa, as we do not view and do not want to be perceived in racial terms.As the Ombud did not rule in our favour based on a substantive argument regarding the question

of perspective, we decided not to take up an
appeal.

Nonetheless, we view it of the utmost importance to
ask how a person or community views itself and wants to project itself. The metaphor of a circle and a sphere comesto mind: whether a sphere is perceived as a circle or a rectangle depends on your point of view.
It is obviously not impossible to look at Orania in racial terms
and see a “whites-only town”

– except that this point of view wouldn’t reflect our
self-conception. To understand our image of ourselves would require another perspective, that of cultural diversity, not in need of racial categories to be celebrated.
Exactly this would be our appeal to the journalistic
fraternity, as to the broad public: see Orania the way it is. Even if you resist our preferred self-projection for being too flat, do not replace it with your own flat projection. See the sphere, it makes for a richer world.
In other words: accept Orania, not as “whites-only
town”, but as Afrikaner town – Afrikaner city
of the future.

CAREL BOSHOFF, ORANIA MOVEMENT PRESIDENT

HERALD LIVE

COMMENTS BY SONNY

MANY RATS ARE NOW JUMPING SHIP!

OTHERS ARE BEING ARRESTED AS WE SPEAK.

THE ROOT OF THIS INVESTIGATION STARTED IN

JOHANNESBURG WHERE THE RENOWNED PAEDOPHILE HOTEL QUARINALE WAS RUN BY ALEX KOUVARIS

Saturday, July 29, 2017

The reopening of the inquiry into Ahmed Timol’s death has led to shocking revelations. Many of the gruesome details are, however, nothing new and represent the brutal history the country must face to move forward. By GREG NICOLSON.

A highlight in Pascale Lamche’s recent documentary, Winnie, is the on-camera appearances of apartheid intelligence officials admitting to waging a propaganda war against Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. As the National Party realised it would have to negotiate power with the ANC, it believed leaders like Winnie Mandela and Chris Hani were radicals, and common ground was more likely to be found with Nelson Mandela. Former National Intelligence Service boss Niel Barnard described the apartheid government’s fear of Winnie Mandela. Vic McPherson, former director of Stratcom, the propaganda arm of the security police, explained in detail how they tried to discredit her.

One of McPherson’s former colleagues appeared live on TV on Monday. Paul Erasmus was a Stratcom operative and, as his unit had extensive media connections to publish disinformation in the media, had written an article for Vanity Fair in the 1990s titled How bad is Winnie Mandela? A book excerpt published in Mother Jones said, “From 1976 to 1993, Erasmus killed, smeared, and harassed enemies of the apartheid state at the urging of his masters.” He applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for amnesty for his crimes.

Erasmus appeared in the North Gauteng High Court on Monday, once again playing the role of the repentant killer. Men like Erasmus always raise a question. His appearance – white hair standing on end like a cartoon character that’d been electrocuted, wearing a shirt and tie, but with a leather jacket – raised a few more. Was he speaking out of self-interest, a genuine belief in justice, or a balance of both?

Erasmus was testifying at the second sitting of the inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol. The South African Communist Party (SACP) member died in October 1971, falling from the notorious 10th floor of the Johannesburg police base, John Vorster Square. Timol’s family have tirelessly pushed to find out how he died and this year the inquest was finally reopened. It’s long overdue and inquests should also be launched for other victims of that 10th floor in Johannesburg, as well as for families across the country still waiting to find out what happened to loved ones allegedly killed by the apartheid regime.

A 1972 inquest into Timol’s death supported the story provided by the police. The magistrate upheld the claim that Timol jumped to his death after a supposed SACP document called on members to commit suicide rather than risk betraying comrades. The document wasn’t produced. Even in the 1970s the nexus of police, prosecutors and courts were criticised for ignoring the evidence to protect and enforce the apartheid regime. John Vorster became synonymous with the deaths of political activists in custody and the inquest will try to establish whether Timol was thrown off the 10th floor by cops.

Erasmus has spoken on the brutality of the apartheid security agencies before. He is reported to have fallen out with his colleagues in the 1990s, resigning officially due to post-traumatic stress. “I think having killed somebody, one crosses a certain line. It makes it easy to do it a second time round,” he told David Goodman, who wrote the excerpt featured in Mother Jones. After smearing her, he later became Madikizela-Mandela’s ally, denying she was responsible for the killing of Stompie Seipei. He has said the security police were clearly passing weapons on to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) to fuel a war among black political parties in the early 1990s.

Yet his Monday testimony at the Timol inquest was still shocking. During his time at Stratcom, he said he designed posters calling Archbishop Desmond Tutu a killer and forged Tutu’s signature, which was used on “many occasions”. He said torture was “standard procedure” as police were dealing with political activists at the time. Timol’s brother Mohammed has also testified to being tortured. Erasmus said there were “resident sweepers” within the system whose sole job it was to cover up apartheid abuses to avoid prosecution.

He spoke of torture techniques. They are best illustrated by the testimony Timol’s comrade Salim Essop gave to the inquest. Essop and Timol were arrested together in 1971, for possessing political pamphlets, and separated at John Vorster. Essop said he was taken to a room notorious for torture. He suffered beatings, electric shocks, asphyxiation, was urinated on and made to stand for days on end at the hands of the police. He said he saw Timol two days before the latter died and it looked clear Timol had also been tortured.

As the inquest proceeds, it will continue to draw attention to society’s lingering pains, some of which have been forgotten. Some within society, especially the youth, may not have confronted stories of such brutality before. A new country was born in 1994. But the cogs that drive its machinery were inherited from a past era. South Africa carries wounds that are rarely confronted in their festering detail. Despite the country’s relative progress, they linger. They have become infected. The Timol inquiry and the testimony of those like Erasmus, despite, or because of, his contradictions, is an opportunity to recognise those wounds.

In his extensive book, Apartheid Guns and Money, Hennie van Vuuren notes that the TRC exposed the horrors of torture and detention but failed to focus on the acts of economic corruption committed by the apartheid government, local corporates and their international counterparts. He focuses heavily on how the corrupt networks of the past created the conditions for ongoing looting.

“The current struggle against corruption in South Africa is undermined by a basic lack of appreciation of that [white] corruption and the criminal networks that facilitate it – namely, that they are continuities of a profoundly corrupt system that predates the first democratic election,” Van Vuuren writes. Apartheid’s economic crimes are currently in vogue, but current discourses neglect talking about both violence and the corruption under the white government. To understand the present, both need to legitimately be placed at the forefront of education and national consciousness.

The TRC exposed some of the violence of apartheid, but there’s a current failure to emphasise the brutality of the past, let alone issues of economic corruption. The same apartheid agents testifying in the Timol case have gone on record before. That Erasmus’s testimony comes as a shock, and that the revelations included in the Winnie documentary are surprising, shows that the TRC wasn’t enough.

We need more information, even if it is repeated, to understand our history. We need to demand more new information and start processing what’s already out there, the testimonies from the TRC, often dismissed as a whitewash, and in other forums. Violence is in the country’s DNA and it’s time we check our condition rather than avoid taking the test. DM

Photo: Ahmed Timol.

GREG NICOLSON

DAILY MAVERICK

COMMENTS BY SONNY COX

THIS INQUEST REEKS OF DOUBLE JEOPARDY.........

From 1971 to date there HAS been speculation that ahmed

timol did not take his owN

life but was rather murdered at the hands of the security police.

we are just going to deal with one of the witnesses here.

the testimony of paul erasmus.

under oath he makes wild allegations against his ex

colleagues and the security branch.

he elaborates on matters of which he was not part OF.

during 1971 he was on the school benches of queens

high kensington.

when he arrived at the security branch he portrAyed

himself as the tough koevoeT bush fighter and produced a photograph oF him standing next to a dead swAPO FIGHTER WITH HIS FOOT ON THE BODY AND A RIFLE IN HIS HAND. YES, A TROPHY PHOTOGRAPH.

ERASMUS WAS ASSIGNED TO THE STUDENT DESK AT JOHN VORSTERSQUARE.

HE STARTED INFILTRATING ROCK BANDS AT THE CROWN MINESCOMMUNITY WHERE HIS MAIN TARGET BECAME ROGER LUCEY.

ERASMUS LATER WAS ASSIGNED TO STRATCOM AS HE TESTIFIED

IN THE PRESENT INQUEST.

ERASMUS AND WINNIE MANDELA BECAME VERY GOOD "CLOSE

FRIENDS" WHEN HE WAS ASSIGNED TO LOOKING AFTER HER AFFAIRS.

HE PERFORMED WITH GREAT ZEAL.

NOTHING HE STATED OTHER THAN SLANDERING HIS COLLEAGUES

AND THE SECURITY BRANCH WAS RECORDED.

ERASMUS BECAME UNSTABLE AND LATER LEFT THE SECURITY

BRANCH UNDER A BLANKET OF SUSPICION.

AT ONE STAGE HE, TOGETHER WITH ANOTHER FRIEND AND WINNIE

MANDELA WANTED TO SET UP A CLINIC IN ROSETTENVILLE TO TREAT H.I.V. PATIENTS WITH HIS SECRET HEALING. CLEANSING OF CONTAMINATED BLOOD WITH CERTAIN CHEMICALS.

THEY COULD NOT FIND A SPONSOR.

THIS VENTURE NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND.

ONE WOULD WONDER WHAT AMOUNT OF CASH HE WAS OFFERED

TO PLAY A ROLE IN "INDIANS CAN'T FLY" AND THIS CONTROVERSIALINQUEST.

THE JUDGEMENT HERE IN THIS CASE CANNOT BE OTHER THAN BIASAND ONE SIDED.YES, MUSLIMS COMMIT SUICIDE MORE NOW THAN EVER!THEY REFER TO THEMSELVES AS "SUICIDE BOMBERS!"

Monday, July 24, 2017

It goes without saying that we live in cynical times. So cynical that some people believe the worst is about to happen. That a “certain someone” is about to steal the leadership of the ANC for his ex-wife, that the political situation is about to get much more disruptive and violent, that in fact what we are living through now is the calm before a very damaging political storm. At the root of these fears, correctly or not, lies President Jacob Zuma. So low has his political image in urban areas fallen that many people believe he is about to try to make a bid to literally steal the country. Quite a few of these fears may be unfounded, but, with some evidence now emerging that Cyril Ramaphosa is the above-board frontrunner for the ANC’s December leadership contest, it is worth examining what Zuma’s options actually are, and how events could play out. By STEPHEN GROOTES.

It is obvious to all that the stakes in the ANC’s December contest are incredibly high for those involved in it. For Zuma, it appears that he may be in a world of legal hurt, should he lose control of the National Prosecuting Authority. For Ramaphosa, on his version at least, the very soul of the ANC is at stake, so his own grouping has to fight incredibly hard.

In the real-world ANC, a practice employed at many previous provincial and regional conference is “gate-keeping” – the simple manipulation and creation of branches. It is a game both sides can play. It is probably happening right now. However, for this to really work, cash, and bucketloads of it, is needed. The cynics would say that state money is going to be used for this purpose, and that the Guptas have the cash to make it happen. Critics of the other side would point to the personal wealth of Ramaphosa.

The branch manipulation must happen in secret, otherwise the entire process is exposed to massive risk. If a branch decides it is going to nominate a certain faction for financial reasons, it would take only one member of that branch to blow the whistle. Nowadays, that wouldn’t even have to be Luthuli House. You could imagine the splash the media would make with the branch buying evidence captured on a cellphone.

So, it could happen, and probably will in some places, but it still is a dangerous proposition.

Then there is the manipulation of the actual delegates at the conference itself. Technically, the delegate goes to the conference with a mandate from their branch. But that mandate is not necessarily cast in stone – they can change that decision if circumstances change. This opens the door wide to dubious political transactions, and involving massive amounts of money. But this is probably an overly cynical reading of the situation – one hopes.

What would be easier is to control the delegates through the provincial chairmen (the use of “chairmen” is deliberate. Despite the fact the ANC may be about to elect its first-ever female national leader, there are currently no elected female leaders of an ANC province). We all know about the “Premier League”, who appear to have almost propped up Zumain the ANC. But recently it seems Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza could be preparing to move over to the Ramaphosa side. From what can be seen (and there is much that cannot be seen), Mpumalanga is solidly unified behind Mabuza. His total control of his own province gives him the crucial role in the coming months.

For the Dlamini-Zuma side the imperative is obvious – make sure Mabuza is locked in. There are several ways this could be achieved. Considering the long-running claims of corruption against Mabuza (there have been no charges, and no convictions) it may be possible to simply threaten to let loose the criminal justice system. Or he could be bought, politically, through the offer of the position of deputy leader in the ANC. But this carrot-and-stick approach only works if Dlamini-Zuma is able to show confidence that they will win, no matter what. If Mabuza thinks for a second that Dlamini-Zuma could lose, then the entire proposal simply wouldn’t work; Mabuza could walk away from the table, never to return.

Another strategy that could also work quite well could be to simply disband the branches and regions that are going to support your opponent. So, if a region in KwaZulu-Natal wants to back Ramaphosa, the Zuma-supporting provincial leadership could simply disband them. City Press suggested this weekend that this may already be happening in the Western Cape. But, again, it is a complicated process. The national executive committee of the ANC could overrule these moves. Then there is the problem that you could end up with an ANC with no structures left standing at the end of it, which would make things even more ungovernable in the party than they are now.

It is now considered a fact of our political lives that our intelligence services play a factional role in our politics. The political sage Aubrey Matshiqi has written of how, a year before Polokwane, he tried to convince National Intelligence Agency officials to stay out of the ANC’s leadership race, but to no avail. Ten years later, journalists routinely have conversations only through encrypted means. For the political opponents of Zuma, this must now be second nature.

But, this is not necessarily the ace in the hole it may appear to be. While it would indeed provide advance notice of what your opponents are planning, it doesn’t automatically mean you can stop their progress. They can still campaign, still plan, still gather support, and crucially, keep the momentum going.

That said, it would be wise to expect many revelations about the personal lives and political histories of the enemies of those who have access to the intelligence agencies. Everything from the “truth” about their internet browser histories to claims of their dark secrets. Still, it would have to be something very deep and very dark to seriously change the race now. Perhaps it would be more effective to find a way to subject a politician to ridicule than to actually hope that some “secret” could stop them from gaining the top job. Ridicule can weaken a person, whereas a new “secret” may not be believed, and may not change the minds of those who are already critical of the incumbent faction.

What can also be expected is the kind of harassment of journalists and other critical voices. In many ways, the authenticity of the #GuptaLeaks emails has been proven again by the fact that groups like Black First Land First are harassing those who write about the emails (Conflict Alert: This writer is on their list of bad, bad people). It almost certainly shows that there is no other possible response, because, as the Rand Daily Mail said once about the Info Scandal, “It’s all true”. As this deluge of damaging information continues to flow, these attempts at harassment are likely to intensify.

Other attempts may well be made to distract the nation and the politically interested from what is really going on. This could include a bid to simply change the subject, or to make the narrative entirely about race, or wealth or inequality. Obviously, Bell Pottinger has already tried this to an extent. It may have gained some traction, but if someone is to use race in a divisive way for an internal party-political campaign, they essentially have to take on the legacy of Nelson Mandela. It sounds easy to get people to turn on each other, but in practice it may actually be harder.

Then there are other levers in government that can be pulled. If one was to judge every single government action only through the prism of the ANC’s December conference, one could suspect that Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane’s new Mining Charter and his new attempt to stop the awarding of mineral prospecting rights was an attempt to force the Chamber of Mines into an action that could be used for campaigning purposes. It would go like this – the Chamber gets pushed into a position in which it has to go to court to enforce the rights of its members. That case then becomes a massive cause célèbrewhich is used to demonstrate how “white people still want to control our minerals”. And of course Dlamini-Zuma would be the only person who can stop this from happening.

These issues can flare up very quickly. The case of the painting, The Spear, is a good example of how cultural issues were used by Zuma to shore up support for him incredibly quickly. It would be foolish to discount that ever happening again.

There’s also the two nuclear options:

These are wild times and the severity of the fight could lead to an altogether outlandish claim that the easiest thing for Ramaphosa’s opponents to do right now would be to simply remove him from the contest altogether.

In fact, that would be an incredibly bad strategy. If this were to happen – whatever the motive, means or result – the finger of suspicion would point to the other faction and the consequences, while difficult to predict, would be nationwide, and severe. But more important, Ramaphosa is not a person acting on his own, he is head of a much greater group. The strength of Ramaphosa is that it is not only his campaign – it is the other ANC leaders who are throwing their weight with him. If he were removed from the scene, there are others to replace him, so the entire exercise would have been futile.

At the same time. the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma faction does not appear to have the same luxury, or depth of the bench.

And the final nuclear option: ... Just cancel the entire ANC conference. Create a situation, either in the ANC, or in the country, in which holding it is just impossible. It’s a favourite scenario of the extreme cynics. But this also has huge dangers. It could allow Ramaphosa and the parts of the ANC to simply hold their own conference on the currently scheduled dates. It would be the end of the ANC, of course; the split would be the real moment that part of the ANC’s conference started. But it would strengthen the claim of those who believe Zuma has dictatorial tendencies and allow them to get a head start in the race to claim the ANC’s legacy and legitimacy.

In the end, while it is correct to be a little concerned about what could happen, it is probably wrong to be unduly worried. There are strong political reasons to believe that the worst options, on the most cynical reading of politicians’ motives, will not come to pass. In the end, what both sides want is control of a fully functioning ANC that can still win the 2019 elections. DM

Thursday, July 6, 2017

According to the reports, the driver managed to drive away, but collided with three other vehicles at the Morningside clinic.According to the reports, the driver managed to drive away, but collided with three other vehicles at the Morningside clinic.

Cape Town 28s gang boss#RalphStanfieldwas with a friend in an Audi when they were shot near Melrose Arch in Joburg. He's in hospital.

EWN

COMMENTS BY SONNY

The assassin was an amateur.
Sounds similar to the first attempt on Brett Kebble's ASSISTED SUICIDE..... SAME SPOT! HOPE THEY DON'T GET PAID FOR THEIR FAILURE.
ITS INTERESTING TO SEE ALL THE STATE ROLL PLAYERS AND IT STRETCHED TO SARS.
ANOTHER TURF WAR CAPTURE!

An independent investigation into Trillian Capital Partners has shown that the company did help the Gupta family pay for the Optimum coal mine.

The report by Budlender has revealed several links between Trillian and the Guptas. It shows that on the same day that Gupta-linked company Tegeta paid for the Optimum Coal Mine, a large sum of money was withdrawn from Trillian's current account.

Advocate Budlender has also revealed how work was done for Eskom by one of Trillian's subsidiaries and therefore when Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown was answering questions about this in Parliament she either provided false or seriously misleading information.

He has pointed out that Trillian management has consistently attempted to obstruct his investigation and failed to provide information.

At the same time, Sexwale says allegations of state capture – along with the power of the Guptas – is destroying the both the ruling party and the country.